POETRY
1. The Scottish Poets. (a) James I (1394–1437) was captured by the English in 1405, and remained in England till 1424, when he married Joan Beaufort, the cousin of Henry V, and returned to Scotland. The chief poem associated with his name is The Kingis Quhair (quire or book). The attempts to disprove his authorship have not been successful. It seems to have been written during his captivity, and it records his first sight of the lady destined to be his wife. It follows the Chaucerian model of the dream, the garden, and the introduction of allegorical figures. The stanza is the rhyme royal, which is said to have derived its name from his use of it. The diction, which is the common artificial blend of Scottish and Chaucerian forms, is highly ornamented; but there are some passages of really brilliant description, and a few stanzas of passionate declamation quite equal to the best of Chaucer’s Troilus and Cressida. It is certainly among the best of the poems that appear between the periods of Chaucer and Spenser. Other poems, in particular the more plebeian Peblis to the Play and Christis Kirk on the Green, have been ascribed to James, but his authorship is extremely doubtful.
The two following stanzas are fair examples of James’s poetry. The man who wrote them was no mean poet.
Of her array the form if I shall write,
Towards her golden hair and rich attire,
In fretwise couchit[45] with pearlis white,
And great balas[46] leaming[47] as the fire,
With mony ane emeraut and fair sapphire;
And on her head a chaplet fresh of hue,
Of Plumis parted red, and white, and blue.
Full of quaking spangis bright as gold,
Forged of shape like to the amorets,
So new, so fresh, so pleasant to behold,
The plumis eke like to the flower jonets,[48]
And other of shape, like to the flower jonets;
And above all this, there was, well I wot,
Beauty enough to make a world to dote.
The Kingis Quhair
(b) Sir David Lyndsay (1490–1555) was born in Fifeshire about the year 1490. He entered the royal service, and rose to fill the important position of Lyon King-of-Arms.
His longer works, which were written during his service at Court, include The Dreme, in rhyme royal stanzas, with the usual allegorical setting; The Testament of Squyer Meldrum, in octosyllabic couplets, a romantic biography with a strongly Chaucerian flavor; The Testament and Compleynt of the Papyngo, which has some gleams of his characteristic humor; and Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estatis, a morality-play, coarse and vulgar, but containing much of his best work. It is full of telling satire directed against the Church, and it shows acute observation of the frailties of his fellows. Lyndsay represents the ruder type of the Scottish Chaucerian. He has a coarseness beyond the standard even of his day; but he cannot be denied a bluff good-humor, a sound honesty of opinion, and an abundant and vital energy.
(c) Robert Henryson (1425–1500) has left us few details regarding his life. In one of his books he is described as a “scholemaister of Dunfermeling”; he may have studied at Glasgow University; and he was dead when Dunbar (see below) wrote his Lament for the Makaris in 1506. Hence the dates given for his birth and death are only approximations.
The order of his poems has not been determined. His longest is a version of the Morall Fabillis of Esope, composed in rhyme royal stanzas and showing much dexterity and vivacity; The Testament of Cresseid is a continuation of Chaucer’s Troilus and Cressida, and it has a finely tragic conclusion; Orpheus and Eurydice, an adaptation from Boëthius, has, along with much commonplace moralizing, some passages of real pathos; and among his thirteen shorter poems Robene and Makyne, a little pastoral incident, is executed with a lightness, a brevity, and a precision that make it quite a gem among its fellows. His Garment of Gude Ladies, though often quoted, is pedantically allegorical, and of no high quality as poetry.
We quote two stanzas from The Testament of Cresseid. The diction is an artificial blend of that of Chaucer and of colloquial Scots, and it is heavily loaded with descriptive epithet; but it is picturesque and dramatic, in some respects suggesting the later work of Spenser.
His face frosnit,[49] his lyre was lyke the leid,
His teith chatterit, and cheverit[50] with the chin,
His ene[51] drowpit, how,[52] sonkin in his heid,
Out of his nois the meldrop[53] fast did rin,
With lippis bla,[54] and cheikis liene and thin,
The iceschoklis that fra his hair doun hang,
Was wonder greit, and as ane speir als lang.
Atouir[55] his belt his lyart[56] lokkis lay
Felterit[57] unfair, ovirfret with froistis hoir,
His garmound and his gyis[58] full gay of gray,
His widderit weid[59] fra him the wind out woir;
Ane busteous bow within his hand he boir,
Under his girdill ane flasche[60] of felloun flanis,[61]
Fedderit[62] with ice, and heidit with hailstanis.
The Testament of Cresseid
(d) William Dunbar (1460–1520) is generally considered to be the chief of the Scottish Chaucerian poets. He was born in East Lothian, studied at St. Andrews University (1477), and went to France and became a wandering friar. Returning to Scotland, he became attached to the household of James IV, and in course of time was appointed official Rhymer. He died about 1520.
Dunbar wrote freely, often on subjects of passing interest; and though his work runs mainly on Chaucerian lines it has an energy and pictorial quality that are quite individual. Of the more than ninety poems associated with his name the most important are The Golden Targe, of the common allegorical-rhetorical type; The Thrissill and the Rois, celebrating the marriage of James IV and the English Margaret (1503); The Dance of the Sevin Deidlie Sins, with its strong macabre effects and its masterly grip of meter; The Twa Meryit Wemen and the Wedo, a revival of the ancient alliterative measure, and outrageously frank in expression; and The Lament for the Makaris, in short stanzas with the refrain Timor Mortis conturbat me, quite striking in its effect.
The following short extract reveals Dunbar’s strong pictorial quality and his command of meter.
Let see quoth he now wha begins:—
With that the foul Sevin Deidlie Sins
Beyond to leap at anis[63];
And first of all in dance was Pride
With hair wyld[64] back and bonnet o’ side,
Like to make vaistie wanis.[65]
And round about him as a wheel
Hung all in rumples to the heel
His kethat[66] for the nanis.[67]
Mony proud trumpour[68] with him trippit;
Through scalding fire aye as they skippit
They girned[69] with hideous granis.[70]
Then Ire came in with sturt[71] and strife
His hand was aye upon his knife,
He brandeist like a beir.[72]
The Dance of the Sevin Deidlie Sins
(e) Gawain Douglas (1474–1522) was a member of the famous Douglas family, his father being the fifth Earl of Angus, Archibald “Bell the Cat.” He studied at St. Andrews University (1489) and probably at Paris, became a priest, and rose to be Bishop of Dunkeld. He took a great share in the high politics of those dangerous times, and in the end lost his bishopric, was expelled to England, and died in London.
His four works belong to the period 1501–13: The Palice of Honour, of elaborate and careful workmanship, and typical of the fifteenth-century manner; King Hart, a laboriously allegorical treatment of life, the Hart being the heart of life, which is attended by the five senses and other personifications of abstractions; Conscience, a short poem, a mere quibble on the word “conscience,” of no great poetical merit; and the Æneid, his most considerable effort, a careful translation of Virgil, with some incongruous touches, but done with competence and some poetical ability. It is the earliest of its kind, and so is worthy of some consideration. Douglas is the most scholarly and painstaking of his group; but he lacks the native vigor of his fellows. His style is often overloaded and listless, and in the selection of theme he shows little originality.
2. John Skelton (1460–1529) comes late in this period, but he is perhaps the most considerable of the poets. His place of birth is disputed; he may have studied at Oxford, and he probably graduated at Cambridge. He took orders (1498), entered the household of the Countess of Richmond, the mother of Henry VII, and became a tutor to Prince Henry. In 1500 he obtained the living of Diss in Norfolk, but his sharp tongue ruined him as a rector. He fell foul of Wolsey, and is said to have escaped imprisonment by seeking sanctuary in Westminster Abbey, where he died in 1529.
In his Garlande of Laurell Skelton gives a list of his own works, most of which have perished. This poem itself is a dreary effort, stilted in style and diffuse in treatment. It is in satire that Skelton appears at his best. His satirical poems, in spite of their shuffling and scrambling meters, are usually sharp, often witty, and nearly always alive. Why come ye not to Court? is addressed to Wolsey, and for jeering impertinence it is hard to find its equal, at that time at least; The Tunnynge of Elynore Runnynge is realism indeed, for it faithfully portrays the drunken orgies of a pack of women in an ale-house. His more serious poems include a Dirge on Edward IV, The Bowge of Court, and a quite excellent morality-play, Magnificence.
We quote an example of Skelton’s peculiar meter, which came to be called “Skeltonics.” It is a species of jingling octosyllabic couplet, but crumbling and unstable, often descending to doggerel. It is, however, lively, witty in a shallow fashion, and attractive. His own description of it is quite just:
For though my rhyme be ragged,
Tattered and jagged,
Rudely rayne beaten,
Rusty and moughte eaten,
It hath in it some pyth.
The following extract shows his powers of invective:
But this mad Amelek
Like to a Mamelek,
He regardeth lords
Not more than potshords;
He is in such elation
Of his exaltation,
And the supportation
Of our sovereign lord,
That, God to record,
He ruleth all at will.
Without reason or skill;
Howbeit the primordial
Of his wretched original,
And his base progeny,
And his greasy genealogy,
He came of the sank[73] royal
That was cast out of a butcher’s stall.
Why come ye not to Court?
3. John Lydgate (1370–1451) had a great reputation in his day, but little of it has survived. He was born at Lydgate, near Newmarket, and became a monk at Bury St. Edmunds, where he rose to be priest in 1397. He studied and wrote much, gaining a wide reputation both as a scholar and a poet. The dates of his birth and death are only approximately fixed.
Lydgate was a friend of Chaucer, upon whom he models much of his poetry. But as a poet he is no Chaucer. He has none of the latter’s metrical skill and lively imagination, and the enormous mass of his poems only enhances their futility. The Falls of Princes, full of platitudes and wordy digressions, is no less than 7,000 verses long; The Temple of Glass, of the common allegorical type, is mercifully shorter; and so is The Story of Thebes, a feeble continuation of Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale. On rare occasions, as in London Lickpenny, he is livelier; but he has no ear for meter, and the common vices of his time—prolixity, lack of humor, and pedantic allegory—lie heavy upon him.
4. Thomas Occleve, or Hoccleve (1368–1450), may have been born in Bedfordshire; but we know next to nothing about him, and that he tells us himself. He was a clerk in the Privy Seal Office, from which in 1424 he retired on a pension to Hampshire.
His principal works are The Regement of Princes, written for the edification of Henry VIII, and consisting of a string of tedious sermons; La Male Règle, partly autobiographical, in a sniveling fashion; The Complaint of Our Lady; and Occleve’s Complaint.
The style of Occleve’s poetry shows the rapid degeneration that set in immediately after the death of Chaucer. His meter, usually rhyme royal or couplets, is loose and sprawling, the style is uninspired, and the interest of the reader soon ebbs very low. He himself, in his characteristic whining way, admits it with much truth:
Fader Chaucer fayne wold han me taught,
But I was dul, and learned lite or nought.
5. Stephen Hawes (1474–1530) was a Court poet during the first twenty years of the sixteenth century. Very little is known of him, even the dates of his birth and death being largely matters of surmise.
His chief works include The Passetyme of Pleasure, a kind of romantic-homiletic poem, composed both in rhyme royal stanzas and in couplets, and dealing with man’s life in this world in a fashion reminiscent of Bunyan’s, The Example of Virtue, The Conversion of Swerers, and A Joyfull Medytacyon. Of all the poets now under discussion Hawes is the most uninspired; his allegorical methods are of the crudest; but he is not entirely without his poetical moments. His Passetyme of Pleasure probably influenced the allegory of Spenser.
6. Alexander Barclay (1476–1552) might have been either a Scotsman or an Englishman for all that is known on the subject. He was a priest in Devonshire, and later withdrew to a monastery in Ely. His important poem, The Ship of Fools, a translation of a German work by Sebastian Brant, represents a newer type of allegory. The figures in the poem are not the usual wooden creatures representing the common vices and virtues, but they are sharply satirical portraits of the various kinds of foolish men. Sometimes Barclay adds personal touches to make the general satire more telling. Certayne Ecloges, another of Barclay’s works, is the earliest English collection of pastorals. It contains, among much grumbling over the times, quite attractive pictures of the country life of the day.